


Book of Wonder

by sans_patronymic



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Humor, Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:25:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7513429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_patronymic/pseuds/sans_patronymic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson is surprised to find Holmes curled up with a book, and even more intrigued when Holmes will not tell him what it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Book of Wonder

In living with Sherlock Holmes, one becomes accustomed to the unusual. Masked visitors in the morning, a cabal of policemen in the afternoon, and an explosion in the sitting room after midnight is an average itinerary for a day at Baker Street. As any reader of mine may suspect, I have long since become inured to discovering exotic insects in the lavatory and bloodied daggers upon the mantel. This sort of thing is customary.

Yet, life is full of surprises, and when the extraordinary becomes ordinary, it is the commonplace which becomes shocking. The reader may understand, then, my great astonishment when, one evening, I returned home from my practice to discover Holmes occupied not with a tearful client, nor a bubbling of chemicals, nor even his violin, but a book. A simple, ordinary, if rather thick, book, which he cradled in his lap.

“What are you doing?” asked I, unable to hide my stupefaction.

“Reading,” was his reply. He did not look up to answer.

I swallowed my irritation; I could see very well what he was reading, and that was precisely what struck me. Holmes and I had both arrived at Baker Street with more than our fair share of books, and between the two of us our sitting room could nearly be called a library. While my own set of shelves boasted a few medical tomes and a fair amount of the sensationalist literature at which Holmes turns up his nose, his own contributions were quite different. His was a hodgepodge of scientific journals, _Who’s Who_ , a smattering of dictionaries in various languages, and a very unique encyclopedia cobbled together from different publishers, editions, and eras, each volume carefully vetted by Holmes for its relative merits—apparently, while the _Brittanica_ was sufficiently in-depth for A-C, _Stowe & Carver _excelled for T-V, and so on—the unworthy volumes of the sets having been discarded before my meeting him. I confess there was little on his shelves that I counted as more than a sleep aid or a paperweight, but I believe that feeling was mutual.

Yet, while I was often keen to spend an unoccupied evening enveloped in a novel, I had never seen Holmes do the same. He consulted his texts, he used them as reference, and while they usually gathered dust, he was quick to notice if Mrs. Hudson had failed to return a particular title to its proper place. To see him curled in his chair, lazily turning pages, rather than flipping through briefly and eagerly in search of a particular fact was a rare and beautiful thing, and I burned with curiosity to know what now captured his attention so.

When I asked him as much, it was with a profound dismay and moderate annoyance I heard the terse response: “a book.” There was nothing for it but to wait.

I studied him carefully, trying to turn Holmes’s own methods upon him. The book was large and lengthy—it laid open of it own weight, and rather than take it in hand, he had to support it against his thighs. The endpapers were dotted with the half-moon indicators usual of an encyclopedia, and for a moment I suspected he was considering admitting a new volume to his collection. But the book looked already rather old and careworn. A bible, I considered, but I have never known Holmes to be a religious man; I could not recall him even owning the good book, for he often asked to consult mine, which was of an altogether different size.

As observation gave me no clear answers, I abandoned myself to fancy. I imagined the book to be the writings of some ancient sect, immeasurably old, penned in a tongue no longer spoken by man. Perhaps Holmes had stumbled upon it during his sojourn to the London Library last week, buried within the stacks, tucked incidentally next to the volume on flowering plants in India which he had come to consult.

_“What are these symbols?” Holmes inquires of the bespectacled librarian._

_“Nobody knows,” is the man’s reply and the two of them stare down upon the cryptic, fading markings which dance across the cover._

_The mystery is too deep to be ignored. Sherlock Holmes, solver of riddles, master of decryption, is my modern Champollion. He has cracked the code and now reads with rapture the wisdom of a forgotten tribe…_

And so I waited, mesmerized, my mind brimming with fantastic speculations. At last, he shut the book in question and lifted it. Perhaps Holmes is correct in his accusations that I read too many adventure stories, as I could not have been more wrong; the title he held before me was not of some ancient language, but instead my own copy of Johnson’s _A Dictionary of the English Language._

"You're reading the dictionary?" I asked, incredulous.

"Yes,” answered Holmes, returning the volume to my shelf. “I was attempting, as you have often asked of me, to make sense of my notes concerning the giant Sumatran rat, and I found myself repeatedly desirous to use words for which—while I have an intuitive sense of their meaning—I have no ready definition. I do not wish to be known as one who does not say what he means. Though I fear I've become rather distracted; I've just read fifty pages straight through."

“Holmes, you are singular."

“I should prefer ‘exceptional’, but ‘singular’ will do.”

With that, my Champollion filled his pipe and regained his seat. I told him of my musings and he laughed heartily at the power of my imagination. We spent the rest of the evening concocting tales of our mythical race, and Holmes's valiant decipherment of their tongue. He is, indeed, exceptional, for what other man could make the dictionary such a source of wonder?


End file.
